The Sunbird

by Wilbur Smith

  The third book was a continuation of the history of Opet up to the lifetime of the poet. This was as fascinating a document as the two that preceded it, but the true magic for me was in the remaining two golden books.

  These were the poems and songs of Huy, poems and songs in the modern sense of the words. This was Huy the warrior, the Axeman of all the Gods, writing an ode to the shiny wing of the bird of the sun, his battle-axe.

  He described the ore brought from the mines of the south, and its smelting in the womb-shaped furnace, the smell of the glowing charcoal and the trickle of the molten metal.

  How it was purged, and alloyed, forged and shaped, its edging and engraving, and when he described the figures of the four vultures and the four suns I looked up at the great axe that hung above my working desk with wonder.

  With Huy I heard the gleaming blade moan in flight, heard the snick of the edge into bone, the sucking withdrawal from living flesh. I read with awe the list of the enemies who had died beneath it, and wondered at their crimes and transgressions.

  Then Huy’s mood changed and he was a roistering fellow, tipping back the jug of red Zeng wine, roaring with laughter in the fire light with his companions in arms.

  Now he was the dandy dressed in white linen, perfumed with sweet oils, his beard twisted and plaited into ropes.

  Now the priest, walking with his gods. Sure of them, tending to their mysteries, and rendering unto them their portion of the sacrifice. Huy kneeling alone in silent prayer, Huy in the dawn lifting his arms in greeting to Baal, the sun-god, Huy in a frenzy or religious revelation.

  Then again Huy is the friend, the true companion, describing his joy in the company of another man. The interlock of personalities, the spice of shared pleasures, dangers faced together and overcome. There is a strong hint in this poem that Huy is a hero-worshipper, blind to the faults of his friend, describing his physical beauty with an almost womanly insight. He details the breadth of shoulder, the regal curve of flaming red beard down onto a chest where the muscle bulges smooth and hard as the boulders upon the hills of Zamboa, the legs like strong saplings, the smile like the warm blessing of the sun-god Baal, and he ends with the line, ‘Lannon Hycanus you are more than King of Opet, you are my friend.’ Reading it, I felt that to have the friendship of Huy was to have something of value.

  The mood of the poet changes again and he is the observer of nature, the hunter, describing his quarry with loving care, missing no detail, from the curve in the ivory tusk to the creamy softness of a lioness’s underbelly.

  Then he is a lover, bemused by the beauty of his sweetheart.

  Tanith whose wide brow is shining white and full as the moon, whose hair blows soft and light as the smoke from the great papyrus fires in the swamps, whose eyes shine green as the deep pool in the temple of the goddess Astarte.

  Then suddenly Tanith is dead, and the poet cries his grief, seeing her death as the flight of a bird, her ivory arms gleaming like spread wings, her last cry echoing across the vault of heaven to touch the hearts of the gods themselves. Huy’s lament was mine, his voice was mine, his terrors and triumphs became my own, and it seemed that Huy was me, and I was Huy.

  I rose early and retired late, I ate little and my face grew gaunt and pale, a haunted face that stared back at me, from my mirror with wild eyes.

  Then suddenly reality caught up with me, shattering the fragile crystal walls of my fairyland. On the same aircraft Louren and Sally arrived together at the City of the Moon. The torment which I had for so long avoided had now begun again.

  Again I tried to hide. I chose the archives as my sanctuary, and spent each day there trying to avoid all contact with either Sally or Louren. Still there was that dreaded hour of the evening meal, trying to smile my way through it and join in the banter and discussion, trying not to notice the private intimate exchange of glances and smiles between Louren and Sally until I could reasonably leave.

  Twice Louren came to me.

  ‘There is something wrong, Ben.’

  ‘No, Louren. No. I swear to you. You are mistaken.’ And I escaped to the stillness of the archives.

  There was Ral’s quiet company and the physical labour of cataloguing, photographing and packing the jars, and besides these I found another distraction. This cavern sealed for almost 2,000 years had been sterile, devoid of any life form when first we opened it. Now it was establishing its own ecology, first the tiny midge flies, then sand fleas, ants, spiders, moths, and finally the little brown gecko lizards. I had started making a film record of this colonization of the archives.

  I spent many hours a day sitting quietly with my camera poised, waiting to obtain some difficult close-up shot of fly or insect and it was thus that I made the last major discovery at the City of the Moon.

  I was working alone at the farthest end of the archives, close by the wall on which was graven the image of the sun. One of the gecko lizards ran down the wall, and across the stone floor. At the spot where the great battle-axe had lain when we discovered it, the lizard stopped. It stood poised, the soft skin of its throat pulsing and its little black beady eyes shiny with expectation. I noticed then the insect it was stalking. A white moth that sat quietly with spread wings on the sun image.

  Quickly I reached for my camera, and set the flash bulb and exposure. I was anxious to record one of the lizards in the moment of its kill. Slowly I moved into a position from which I could focus on the moth, and I waited while the lizard approached in a series of swift dashes. Twelve inches from the moth it stopped again, and seemed to gather itself for the final assault. I waited breathlessly, my finger on the trigger button. The lizard shot forward and I exploded the bulb.

  The lizard froze with the body of the moth crammed in its mouth. Then it turned and darted head-down towards the floor; when it reached the corner formed by wall and floor it disappeared and I laughed at its ludicrous fright.

  I wound the film, replaced the flash bulb, returned the camera to its case, and was about to resume my work when a thought occurred to me. I went back to the end wall of the cavern, to the point where the lizard had disappeared and stooped to examine the juncture of floor and wall. It seemed solid, and I could see no hole or crack for the lizard to use as a refuge. Intrigued now by the lizard’s disappearance, I went to fetch one of the electric arc-lights on its cable and I set it so that the beam fully illuminated the wall.

  Then on hands and knees I crawled along the wall. I felt my heart start to pound like a war drum, and the hum of blood in my ears, the warmth of it in my cheeks. My hand as I reached for my penknife was unsteady, and I nearly broke my thumbnail as I tried to open the blade.

  Then I was probing the faint crack line, plugged with dust, that separated wall and floor. The blade of my knife slipped into the crack to its full length.

  I rocked back on my heels and stared at the wall, seeing the image of the sun throwing weird shadows in the arc-light

  ‘Perhaps,’ I whispered aloud, ‘it’s just possible…’ And then I was grovelling again beneath the image of Baal, almost as though I were one of his worshippers. Frantically I probed the crack, following it along the floor, until abruptly it turned ninety degrees, and climbed the wall. Here the crack was secret-jointed, riveted and turned back on to itself, making it all but invisible. The cunning skill with which this joint had been concealed convinced me that it hid something vital. The workmanship of this piece of the wall was a far cry from the rough joints on the roof slabs through which the dust had filtered down.

  Now I jumped up and paced restlessly back and forth before the blank wall. I was alive again tor the first time since my return to the City of the Moon. My skin tingled, my step was full of spring, my fists clenched and unclenched and my brain was racing with excitement.

  ‘Louren,’ 1 thought suddenly. ‘He should be here.’ I almost ran back down the archives, and out through the tunnel. In the wooden guard hut which enclosed the entrance to the tunnel one of the security guards was sprawled in a
chair with his boots on the desk. The collar of his blue uniform was unbuttoned, his cap pushed back on his head. On the wall behind him his gun-belt hung from a hook, with the black butt of the revolver sticking out of the holster. He looked up from his paperback Western, a thick beaky-nosed face with cold eagle eyes.

  ‘Hi, Doc. You in a hurry?’

  ‘Bols, can you get hold of Mr Sturvesant tor me? Ask him to come up here right away.’

  I was on my knees below the sun image when Louren arrived.

  ‘Lo, come over here. I want to show you something.’

  ‘Hey, Ben!’ Louren laughed, and it seemed to me that his expression was one of relieved pleasure. ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you really smile in two weeks. God, I was worried about you.’ He slapped my shoulder, still laughing. ‘This is more like the old Ben again.’

  ‘Lo, look at this.’ And he knelt beside me.

  Ten minutes later he was no longer smiling, his face was cold and intent. He was staring at the wall with those pale blue eyes as though he were seeing through the solid rock.

  ‘Lo,’ I began, but he waved me to silence with a peremptory gesture. He never took his eyes from the wall and now it seemed to me that he was listening to a voice I could not hear, I watched that cold god-like face with a sudden feeling of almost superstitious awe. I had a premonition of something unnatural about to happen.

  Slowly, step by step, Louren approached the sun image. His hand went out and lay against the centre of the great disc. His fingers were spread, seeming to echo the shape of the image. He began to press against the wall, I saw the tips of his fingers flatten against the rock, changing shape beneath the pressure of his hand.

  For a few long seconds nothing happened, then suddenly the wall began to move. There was no sound, no grating or squeal of protesting hinge, but the whole wall began to revolve upon a concealed axis. A ponderous, deliberate movement that revealed the square dark opening to a farther passageway concealed beyond the image of Baal.

  Staring into that dark prehistoric opening I whispered without glancing at Louren, ‘How did you do that, Lo? How did you guess?’

  His tone as he replied was puzzled. ‘I knew - I just knew, that’s all.’ We were both silent again, staring into the opening. I was seized by a sudden unaccountable dread of what we would find in there.

  ‘Get the light, Ben,’ Louren ordered without taking his eyes from the doorway. I fetched the portable arc-light, and Louren took it from my hand. I followed him as he walked through the doorway.

  Before us a passageway slanted down into the earth at an angle of forty-five degrees. The passage was seven foot six inches high, and nine feet wide. There was a flight of stone steps cut into the floor. Each step was worn, with edges smoothed and rounded. The walls and roof of the tunnel were of unadorned stone, and the depths of the tunnel were hidden from us by shadow and darkness.

  ‘What’s this?’ Louren pointed at two large circular objects which lay at the head of the staircase, I saw the gleam of bronze rosettes upon them.

  ‘Shields,’ I told him. ‘War shields.’

  ‘Someone dropped them in a hurry.’

  We stepped over them carefully and started down the stair case. There were 106 steps, each six inches high.

  ‘No dust in here,’ Louren remarked.

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘The seal of the door was tight,’

  His words should have acted as a warning, but I was lost in the wonder and excitement of this new discovery. The surface of the stairs was as clean as though freshly swept.

  At the bottom of the staircase we reached a T-junction. On our right the passage led to a gate of barred ironwork which was closed and bolted. On the left it descended another twisting staircase that disappeared into the living rock.

  ‘Which way?’ Louren asked.

  ‘Let’s see what’s behind the gate,’ I suggested in a voice choking with excitement, and we went to it.

  The heavy bolts were not locked but a thread of gold wire was twisted around the jamb of the gate, and a heavy clay seal closed the entrance.

  The figure on the seal was of a crudely wrought animal, and the words, ‘Lannon Hycanus. Gry-Lion of Opet, King of Punt and the Four Kingdoms.’

  ‘Give me your knife.’ Louren said.

  ‘Lo, we can’t,’ I began.

  ‘Give it to me, damn you.’ His voice was shaking, thick with a peculiar lust and passion. ‘You know what this is? It’s the treasury, the gold vaults of Opet!’

  ‘Wait, let’s do it properly, Lo,’ I pleaded, but he took the seal in his bare hands and ripped it from the gate.

  ‘Don’t do it, Lo,’ I protested, but he pulled the bolts open, and flung his weight against the gate. It was rusted closed, but he attacked it with all his weight. It gave, swinging back far enough for Louren to squeeze through. He ran forward, and I ran after him. The tunnel turned again at right angles and led directly into a large chamber.

  ‘God!’ shouted Louren ‘Oh God! Look at it, Ben. Just look at it.’

  The treasury of Opet lay before us with all its fabulous wealth untouched. Later we could count and weigh and measure it, but now we stood and stared.

  The chamber was 186 feet long and twenty-one wide. The ivory was stacked along most of one wall. There were 1,016 large elephant tusks. The ivory was rotten and crumbly as chalk, but in itself must have been a vast treasure 2,000 years ago.

  There were over 900 large amphorae, sealed with wax. The contents of precious oils had long since evaporated into a congealed black mass. There were bolts of imported linen and silk, rotted now so that they crumbled to dust at the touch.

  The metals were stacked along the opposite wall of the vault - 190 tons of native copper cast into ingots shaped like the cross of St Andrew; three tons of tin, cast into the same shape; sixteen tons of silver; ninety-six of lead; two of antimony.

  We walked down the aisle along the centre of the vault, staring about us at this incredible display of wealth.

  ‘The gold,’ Louren muttered. ‘Where is the gold?’

  There was a stack of wooden chests, carved from ebony, the lids decorated with ivory and mother-of-pearl inlay. These were the only objects of an artistic nature in the vault, and even they were crudely executed battle scenes or hunting scenes.

  ‘No, don’t do it, Lo,’ I cried another protest as Louren began ripping open the lids.

  They were filled with semi-precious stones, amethyst, beryl, tigers’ eyes, jade and malachite. Some of these were crudely cut and incorporated in gold jewellery, thick clumsy pieces, collars, brooches, necklaces and rings.

  Louren hurried on down the aisle, and then stopped abruptly. In another recess that led off the main chamber, behind another iron gate, the gold was stacked in neat piles. Cast in the usual ‘finger’ moulds. The piles of precious metal were insignificant in bulk, but when, months later, it was all weighed the total was over sixty tons.

  Its value was in excess of £60,000,000 sterling. In the same recess as the gold were two small wooden chests. These yielded 26,000 carats of uncut and rough-cut diamonds of every conceivable colour and shape. Not one of these was smaller than one and a half carats, and the largest was a big sulky yellow monster of thirty-eight carats, and this added a further £2,000,000 to the intrinsic value of the treasure.

  Here was the wealth of forty-seven kings of Opet, accumulated painstakingly over the course of 400 years. No other treasure of antiquity could compare with this profusion.

  ‘We’ll have to be bloody careful, Ben. No word of this must leak out. You understand what might happen if it did?’ He stood with a finger of solid gold in each hand, looking down on the piles of treasure. ‘This is enough to kill for, to start a war!’

  ‘What do you want me to do, Lo? I must have help in here. Ral or Sally even.’

  ‘No!’ He turned on me ferociously. ‘No one else will be allowed in here. I will leave orders with the guards, no one but you and I.’

  ‘I need help, Lo.
I can’t do it myself, there is too much here.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Louren said.

  ‘It will take weeks.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he repeated. ‘No one else. Not a word to anyone else.’

  Until six o’clock that evening Louren and I explored the treasure vault.

  ‘Let’s find out where the other branch of the tunnel leads to,’ I suggested.

  ‘No,’ Louren stopped me. ‘I want to keep normal hours here. I don’t want the others to guess that we are up to something. We will go down to the camp now. Tomorrow we will have a look at the other fork of the tunnel. It can’t be anything like this anyway.’

  We closed the stone door behind us, sealing off the secret passage, and at the guard post Louren made his orders clear, repeating them and writing them on the guard’s instruction sheet. Ral’s and Sally’s names were removed from the list of those allowed into the tunnel. And later he mentioned it to them at dinner. He explained it away as an experiment that he and I were attempting. It was a difficult evening for me. I was overwrought by the day’s excitement, and now that I had shaken off my mood of apathy I was over-reacting to the normal stimuli of living. I found myself laughing too loudly, drinking too much, and the agony of my jealousy returned more intensely than ever.

  When Louren and Sally looked at each other like that, I wanted to shout at them, ‘I know. I know about it, and damn you, I hate you for it.’

  But then I knew it was not true. I did not hate them. I loved them both and this made it all the harder to bear.

  There was no chance of sleep for me that night. When I get myself into a certain state of nervous tension, then I can go for two or three nights without being able to still the racing of my overheated brain. I did not mean to spy on her. It was a mere coincidence that I was standing at the window of my hut staring cut from my darkened room at the moonlit night when Sally left her own hut.